AG: In terms of the companion system, what was the decision behind expanding that to the extent you guys have? Obviously there were examples of it in the other games, but it seems you guys have crafted a deeper, more robust system here...

Tess: Yeah, so one of the things Obsidian is known for is our companions (the other is our writing and story stuff). And that's a big deal to us, to have companions who feel like people; you know they have a story, they have a personality, you know, they all talk a certain way. So in our game, the first thing we tried to address is the complaints and frustrations people had with the companions in Fallout 3. You know, they'd get in the way, or they wouldn't equip what I wanted them to, or they'd just let themselves die... So with ours, we've got a really quick and easy companion wheel. It's just one click and you can tell them "use a Stimpak", "go over here", "get away from me", you know.

GN: Game development is one of the holy grails of nerdery. How did you get into it?

Tess: I started out poking around in hex files for PC games, working as a translator on fan patches for Japanese and Korean games, pretty minor stuff as a hobby. As a university student, I played Natural Selection (Half-Life total conversion mod) obsessively and got on the QA team, which was probably the tipping point; once I got my degree, I landed a job with an MMO publisher as a community manager, and was eventually shanghai’d into becoming a producer. And here we are!

Excellent! Another one with an extensive background in playing turds is responsible for our future RPGs. That's certainly a good sign!